Over the past decade there has been a dramatic increase in the quality and types of imaging tools available to medical practitioners. There have also been significant advances in our ability to digitally capture and store large data files, and a variety of attempts have been made to apply these new storage technologies to the proliferating volumes of medical images.
However, despite these recent advances there remains a significant gap between a medical practitioner's ability to collect multimedia information, and his or her ability to intelligently and efficiently use this information. In typical applications images are stored as part of a flat-file system, retrievable only when later accessing specific patient information. This amounts to little more than a digital version of the analog file systems of old. Where databases have been employed as something more than just enhanced filing systems, what is typically implemented is simple indexing around a title or specialized code. Many of these systems are also confined to closed networks. Where external access is available, little more than a static display is offered.
All of these approaches leave most of the promise of enhanced information-based productivity for the medical practitioner unfulfilled. There remains, therefore, a need for a system that is robust, interactive, and permits geographically remote practitioners to create, update, and relationally search multimedia medical information.